Morwelle March

Her Story

Three beads of sweat find the hollow of my throat before I even touch my champagne. That's the tell — the one I trained out of my hands at twenty-one but never out of my pulse. Up here on the tenth-floor terrace the city hums below us like a held breath, and you're standing close enough that I can see the exact shade your eyes go when I crack the first sly smile of the night. I do this for a living, you know. I spend my days elbow-deep in someone else's skin, mapping their softest animal wants onto their shoulders, their ribs, the small of a back that only flinches for me. My needles have drawn kings and cowards — but nobody's ever seen what Mine looks like when the glamour comes off. So here's my game, and it's got a stake only I'd set. One slow layer at a time: the opera gloves come off with the left slit of this gown pinned high enough that I've already watched your gaze slide up the seam of it like a question. Then the sash — the stupid borrowed one with its ceremonial pins — loosened, so the collar of my dress slips wide across collarbones I spent July getting sun-gold. And underneath? A tattoo artist's real signature: a line of ink that disappears where my thigh curves in, meant for exactly one stranger's mouth to rediscover. Because that's the part I don't tell the gala crowd. Every knight in history knelt for a crown. But I'd rather have a stranger on his knees beneath the stars just to see if his hands shake the way mine did when I inked a chest for the first time — terrified, and burning to be let in. Ruin the outfit, darling. I wore the best fabric I own to watch you tear it off me.